Links From Blog Comments - Case Study
November 5, 2007
I've decided to create another case study, this time demonstrating whether or not writing comments on blogs that do not use the NOFOLLOW attribute will help search engine rankings from the links that are received.
To facilitate this, I've created a brand new AdSense site based around a niche theme. It has 11 unique articles on it (nothing from free article sites).
I've also written a script which did some massive data mining through Google to find about 600 blogs in a variety of subjects that do not use the NOFOLLOW attribute. (In case you don't know what that is, the NOFOLLOW attribute prevents search engines from counting the link in their rankings.)
I've already had about 16 comments posted to these blogs. These are NOT spam comments. These are quality comments related to whatever post the comment is placed on.
It will take a couple of weeks for all 600 comments to be completed. Once they are, I will post an update letting you know how many comments were kept by the blog owners (some blog owners will not approve comments that use keywords as the comment author name for optimization purposes).
I've already seen some results from just the 16 comments made so far. Here's my search engine crawler stats from the day after posting the first set of comments:
Notice that all 3 engines hit the site, and Google crawled the entire site, the next day after posting the comments.
Two days after posting the comments, the home page of the site is appearing in Google's index.
So far, so good. Google is apparently following and counting the links. I'll post an update in about two weeks.
FYI, I decided to create this case study after releasing a video that shows you how to find WordPress blogs that don't use nofollow.
Please post your comments and questions below.
Low priced products build lists and make money.
November 1, 2007
I am always testing new ideas to see whether or not they may be a viable part of my long term business goals. To that end, you may recall, I created the $7 Secrets scripts (which I recently sold to Don Morris, who is doing a fine job of improving and maintaining the product). My tests with that product proved to me that low priced products (sold for $7) can be very successful.
My most recent test went even further with that idea. "Okay," I thought, "$7 sells very well, but what about $1?" It seemed to me that a product selling for $1 would sell very well, and have almost zero refunds. To that end, I created 3 "ideas" (simple one-page mini-reports) which I sold for $1 each: one which gave details about a high-converting pay-per-lead program, another that shows you where to get very cheap content created for your sites, and another which details how I got thousands of free one-way links to one of my web sites and ranked it well in Google.
Here's the link to the site where the reports can be found:
My results were so positive that I wanted to report my findings to you in case you could use the idea yourself.
Absolute Dollars
We're all interested in the immediate cash that can be earned from any new product we promote, and my One Dollar Ideas were not failures in this regard. I earned about $3,500 in 5 days from sales of the $1 products themselves plus the back-end offers I mention in the report.
The conversion rate of the first $1 product was about 25%. That means, on average, every single visitor I sent to that site earned me 25 cents. I wish AdSense paid out like that!
List Building
In order to build a subscriber list, I had people who wanted to be affiliates for the product opt-in to a mailing list in order to receive information on how they could get 100% instant commissions on the reports (plus 50% of back-end commissions for two out of the three products).
From that opt-in form I built a list of 1,458 subscribers in those 5 days. Certainly a successful test. About 50% of people who purchased the reports opted in to find out how they could become affiliates.
Having a list of 1,458 people who are willing to break out their wallets (or PayPal accounts) and spend even $1 is a great business tool. These are not freebie seekers. Each one was willing to part with a little money for some valuable information, and each one is wanting to be an affiliate for valuable products.
Conclusion
My conclusion is that low-cost informational products that have back-end products (or a one-time-offer) attached to them can certainly be a strong leg of your business. People are willing to pay a small amount of money for a useful tip or idea that you have which they haven't thought of yet.
So if you've got some information that you're using in your business, and you know that information would be useful to other people, then take the time to put together a one-page report on how to use that information. Turn around and sell that mini-report for $1, and watch the funds (and subscribers) roll in.
(FYI, I used the $7 Secrets scripts to power the sales process of the mini-reports.)
Post your thoughts and questions in a comment below!
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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